The Artful Destruction of Godzilla

Three years after the horror of the Japan tsunami and subsequent Fukushima nuclear meltdown, it makes some grim sense that we’re getting a remake of Godzilla, a beloved monster originally born out of a different nuclear cataclysm. In fact, we seem to be entering something of a mini–kaiju renaissance, with director Gareth Edwards’s new Godzilla coming just a year after Guillermo del Toro released his loud, fervid Pacific Rim. Compared with that rather garish film, Godzilla is almost small and staid, but there’s still plenty of artful destruction to be found within.

Edwards’s feature debut, 2010’s dreamy Monsters, also featured big otherworldly creatures, but the hook of that film, an ingenuity invented out of budget restrictions, was that the monsters were barely glimpsed. That deceptively lo-fi approach made for something pensive and eerie, so it’s a bit of a shame to see Edwards eschewing much of that restraint in favor of a huge new Godzilla. But what he has made within the rigid studio framework is still rather captivating in parts. It’s clever with its revisionist tweaks, but still reverent, in an oddly heartwarming way, of all the Godzilla history that’s come before it.

After a flashback to 1999 involving a disaster at a Japanese nuclear power plant, we’re dropped into the present day with the strapping but soft-eyed Ford Brody (what a name! A Jaws allusion perhaps?), played by a bulked-up (and no worse for it) Aaron Taylor-Johnson. He’s the son of Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), the guy in charge of the nuclear power plant that was destroyed 15 years ago. When his father is arrested for sneaking back into the quarantined territory where the plant used to be, Ford has to say goodbye to his wife, Elle (Elizabeth Olsen), and young son in San Francisco and go bail his father out. Of course his seemingly paranoid, wacked-out pop has actually been onto something, and it’s soon (maybe too soon?) made clear what really happened at that power plant a decade and a half ago.

The backstory exposition is left up to scientist Dr. Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and his assistant Vivienne (Sally Hawkins), but Edwards only devotes a scene or two to explanation. Pretty quickly it’s off to humanity’s war against the monsters, seen mostly in zoomed-out scope, coming in close for a few clattering set pieces—an attack at the Honolulu airport, a scary happening on a bridge in the nighttime—before pulling back out again to show us the full panorama of carnage. And, yes, I did say “monsters,” plural, as good ol’ Godzilla isn’t alone in this particular reboot. Those of you who’ve seen later trailers probably know who I’m talking about, but just in case you don’t want to know, I won’t say anything here.

While Edwards does a good job of meting out his reveal, a spike here and a claw there, it’s probably impossible to totally surprise us when finally showing Godzilla in full. This is too familiar a character, if we can call him (it?) a character, for the kind of awe that Edwards might hope to synthesize. But Edwards also seems to know that, as much of Godzilla has a witty sense of timing to it, the joke being not if Godzilla will strike a classic pose, but when. We’ve seen all this bridge-destroying, building-toppling stuff before, but this new Godzilla’s rhythms are playful and astute, a nice way to offset our jadedness. This isn’t a thinking man’s Godzilla, exactly, but it’s certainly clever where it counts.

It also looks wonderful. There’s a painterly quality to much of the movie’s photography, especially in the rattling climax battle between monsters and men. The sky is gray and stormy and streaked with fire, as towering beasts stand starkly against the backdrop of a ruined world. And the ominous depths of the Pacific are made truly ominous, all fog and swell hinting at sinister things. Edwards is a stylist, but builds his pictures economically. He’s got a keen eye for scale, as was so beautifully on display in Monsters, and without all the overstuffed aesthetics of so many other similarly budgeted movies, Godzilla is tidy, almost quaint.

In some ways, that means this remake doesn’t quite justify its existence. It’s a fun, often invigorating movie, and certainly more intelligently made than much of its seasonal ilk, but it rarely feels necessary. That’s partly an unfixable problem of remake fatigue. But it’s also the fault of newbie screenwriter Max Borenstein, whose script veers too abruptly between cute and clunky. For example, it’s possible that it’s a joke that Olsen’s character has nothing to do but look scared, some sort of sly comment on women’s roles in these sorts of movies, but it’s also maybe just lazy writing. Try as he might, Edwards isn’t entirely able to turn all of the script’s dull, studio-approved schlock into something fresh. But he makes a mighty effort, and when Godzilla is good, it roars.